A letter signed by top Lithuanian adjudicator Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, senior hassidic rabbinic authority Rabbi Shmuel Wosner and over a dozen other haredi rabbis appeared in the major haredi newspapers – Yated Ne’eman, Hamodia and Hamvaser - and without mentioning them by name, was addressing the military conversions, which were recently declared kosher by President of the Shas Council of Torah Sages Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar, after their validity was challenged.

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar defended on Monday his decision to approve the military conversions that are undertaken according to Jewish law.

The chief rabbi then proceeds to make the distinction between those who never really accepted “Torah and mitzvot at the time of [their] conversion,” and are thus not considered converts, and those who had the right intent at the time of their conversion, but did not remain observant afterward.

In 2010, [Shas MK Rabbi Haim] Amsalem published a massive Hebrew-language work, Zera Yisrael ("The Seed of Israel"), arguing that, when it comes to the non-Jewish descendants of Jews, things really are notall that cut and dried.

Bringing to bear a host of authoritative sources, Amsalem persuasively demonstrates that such persons may be seen as falling under the little-known but legally valid category that gives his book its title.

They might not yet be Jewish, but through their origins they are still definitely connected to the Jewish people, and this connection has important ramifications.

The young would-be convert to Judaism with a gold Star of David pendant peeking through a buttoned shirt is still baffled by the summer afternoon he says he was called in and dismissed from an Israeli army conversion course for being gay.

Over the past year, I have been intensively lobbying Israel's government on behalf of the Bnei Menashe, and I am optimistic that a breakthrough is near.

Both the chief rabbi and Interior Minister Eli Yishai have expressed their support for bringing the remaining members of the community to Israel. All that is needed now is for the Israeli government to take the courageous and historic decision to reunite this lost tribe with our people.

Once you have put your life on the line, shabbat, kashrut, and other such obligations, critical as they are, assume proportionately less weight, and an individual's failure to live up to them in full, however disappointing, should not constitute any sort of disqualification. I hold this to be especially true of converts serving in the Israeli army.

If we are not vigilant, the public sphere will change. It has already begun to change. We may not have noticed it, but the voice of women is already being heard less, not metaphorically, but in reality. If cadets at the main officers training base, albeit only a handful, left the auditorium when an army entertainment troop (which included women) was singing, then we are facing a new era.

What seems absurd to us today is liable to become a commonplace occurrence tomorrow

“Black Bus” is a close look at the price paid by women who leave their Hasidic communities. Weinfeld and Einfeld are unable to have contact with their parents or siblings or friends. Even as they explain — to the filmmaker, to Haredi Jews who come to talk with them in the movie — why staying in the community was impossible, you see how much pain they’re in.

Anat Hoffman has a message for Canadian Jews: Israel is “too important to be left to Israelis. The Jews here have a right and a duty to voice their hopes for Israel.”

If they don’t, she warned in a Jan. 17 interview, “they may wake up one day and see an Israel they absolutely cannot relate to… Israel is a state of all the Jews, whether they live there or not, and reflects on all Jews.”

I have just returned from a brief trip to Israel. While we are accustomed lately to reading grim news from Israel, my experience was the opposite.

I also met for several hours with first-year students of the Hebrew Union College.

... My goal was to give them the tools to advocate for Reform values and to help them to understand why love for Israel and promoting Reform Judaism in the Jewish state is an essential component of their Reform identity.

After serving as founding director of the Religious Action Center in Washington, DC, Rabbi Richard Hirsch moved to Israel to lead the World Union for Progressive Judaism and become a tireless advocate for the global Reform Jewish community.

This book traces Rabbi Hirsch's efforts to build and support Progressive Judaism in Israel and to integrate Reform Judaism into the institutions of the Zionist Movement.

The police recently concluded an extended investigation into the alleged fraud of a local yeshiva accused of defrauding the Masa Israel project, Anglo File has learned.

The yeshiva received $410,000 in stipends from Masa for students who signed up for the program but apparently did not attend the institution. The yeshiva, Tomchei Tmimim in Migdal Ha’emek − which belongs to the global educational network of the Chabad movement − denies any wrongdoing.

Jewish Agency officials last week for the first time explicitly stated their intention to close the institution’s current departments − including the large Aliyah Department − in the wake of a far-reaching overhaul according to the agency’s new strategic plan.

The proposed change strengthens concerns among immigration organizations that the agency might abandon its leading role in promoting and facilitating immigration, contrary to its claims that its new focus on Jewish identity will encourage more Jews to move to Israel.

The campaign comes at the behest of the Israeli government, which agreed last November to bring up to 7,846 additional Ethiopians to Israel. Like Israel’s commitment, the federation’s campaign comes with an eye toward concluding mass Ethiopian aliyah; it’s called “Completing the Journey.”

For the first time ever, leaders of Israeli communities around the world met last week to discuss the unique role of an Israeli community in the Diaspora.

“This is a historic moment, and it is very important to be here. Israel needs help from the Israelis abroad,” said Amir Gissin, the Israeli consul general in Toronto, at the opening of the three-day conference of the World Council of Israelis Abroad, Building Bridges to World Jewry and the State of Israel.

A group of American-Jewish teenagers with severe physical disabilities is scheduled to arrive in Israel this morning for a free 10-day trip that is usually the privilege of their healthier peers.

Sponsored by Chai Lifeline, a U.S.-based nonprofit servicing chronically ill children as well as cancer survivors, the trip takes the mostly Orthodox teenagers ‏(and one parent of each participant‏) from across the U.S. to Israel for the first time in their lives.

The San Francisco-based Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, which has given out about $700 million since it was started by Richard Goldman in 1951, with most of the gifts benefiting environmental, health and Jewish causes, will close at the end of 2012, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The Avi Chai Foundation, which donates funds primarily to Jewish education and continuity, is scheduled to give away all of its estimated $700 million by 2020.

The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, a family of foundations that helped to found Taglit-Birthright Israel, is set to close in five years.

Just look at the new phenomenon in Israel where national service was once the sole purview of the religious Zionist community; recent years have seen a rise of new organizations like Ma’ase, Shlomit, Sheirut Leumi Mamlachti empowering young adults of Israel’s secular community to volunteer for a year of service before their obligatory time in the army or enabling those exempt from army service who still wish to impact the destiny of the state of Israel. These organizations are collectively serving thousands.

The Health Ministry announced plans this week to ease the licensing process for new immigrants, including allowing doctors to apply for a medical license before they physically relocate and translating into English a licensing exam for paramedical professionals.

Defining peoplehood forces us away from personal self-definition to a more global, collective statement of affiliation.

“Peoplehood” may be a faddish word in the current language of institutional Judaism; “continuity,” “renaissance” and “solidarity” all enjoyed their philological heyday in taglines and fundraising campaigns.

Clearing work was finished on a drainage channel underneath the Western Wall Plaza dating from the Second Temple Period, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday. The cleared channel, which is over half a kilometer long, was built under the main road of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

"The system is to the side of the Western Wall, outside of the Temple Mount. The Western Wall itself is surrounded by stone walls weighing tens of thousands of tons and no one is digging through them underneath the Temple Mount, both because of the explicit religious prohibition and because it's simply not possible."

Alieza Salzberg is a graduate student at the Hebrew University where she studies Rabbinic Literature.

Today’s archeologists are locked in a fierce debate over whether archeology can confirm biblical stories. The land of Israel has yielded many archeological finds, but what they mean is subject to interpretation: archeology is both influenced by politics and personal belief, and plays a role in shaping political discourse.

King was born 20 year ago in Jerusalem. Her grandfather is a member of the ascetic Amish sect, and the deep love for Israel was bestowed on her by her parents, who met during a Christian festival that was held in Israel.

Her father established the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem...

Currently, King is one of some 100 Christians serving in the IDF. After completing her basic training at the southern Zeelim military base, King was given the position of a Hummer operator.

“In the Canadian market, we are going to invest about $350,000 in… advertising. A good portion of our budget is going to be invested in the Christian market. We have found that [a lot of] tourism in the next few years in Israel is going to be from the Christian market.”

After a preliminary hearing on Tuesday determined that the issue should be handled in the courts, the Jerusalem Labor Court will be deciding over the next few months whether rabbinic ordination should be recognized as equivalent to a bachelor’s degree, vis-à-vis the Civil Service Commission’s prerequisites for the position of a supervisor in the haredi educational system.

A Taub Center study showed that 30 years ago, 21 percent of the haredi males did not work. Today, 65 percent are not working.

A comparative study shows that in the same haredi communities in New York and London, 70 percent of the males were employed compared to 35 percent employed in Israel. That means that they are not working here because they are able to get away with it. They aren’t doing it in New York and London because the government does not subsidize them.

Maverick Shas MK Rabbi Haim Amsalem on Tuesday launched a new social movement that will strive to return the crown of moderate religious and Sephardi social activism to its former glory, as per the founding principles of Shas that he says are now no longer the spirit of the party.

“If there is no alternative, civilian marriages should take place,” he replied to a question. “Do you want people to be left stranded [without a framework to marry in]? I'd like everyone here to marry in the halachic way I believe in... but I can't force my beliefs on others, and not offer an alternative to those who don't accept it.”

The former vice mayor of Hadera, Sami Levy, is suspected of raping, indecently assaulting, and in the case of one, forcibly confining, several women who came to him for aid in the capacity of his work.

"Filling the Void" is the first film written and directed by Rama Burstein for the Israeli mainstream audience.

Burstein is an ultra-Orthodox woman who lives with her husband and children in Tel Aviv, a few streets away from the studio; she is a graduate of the second class of students at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, in Jerusalem.

Sixty-one percent of the ultra-Orthodox living in Israel prefer to live in towns segregated from the secular population, a new comprehensive study focusing on the haredi sector conducted by Professor Avi Degani, president of the Geocartography Group, reveals.

A member of Jerusalem's so-called "Chastity Squad" who attacked a store owner and drove away his customers – is going to jail, The Jerusalem District Court decided Tuesday.

Judge Nava Ben-Or sentenced Shmuel Weisfish, 24, to two years in prison following his conviction for several charges of violence against the owner of an electronics store in the ultra-religious Geula neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Israeli real estate firm Electra on Monday submitted a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to the haredi court in Bnei Brak, promising to "act with respect and care in the futre" regarding Israeli graves, according to Army Radio.

The haredi community accepted Electra's move and the boycott against the company was canceled.

According to Prof. Avi Degani, president of the consultancy and applied research Geocartography Knowledge Group, the ultra-Orthodox public celebrates 7,700 weddings annually. Most of the brides and grooms are between the ages of 18 and 22.

Within a year or two they will be embracing their first child. Marriage at an early age, along with the many births, accounts for the impressive increase in the size of the Haredi population.

The word “ultra,” one dictionary informs me, is Latin for “the far side.” Well, there are certainly days when I feel I have wandered into a Gary Larson cartoon. But most of the time, my life, like the lives of most “Ultra-Orthodox” Jews, is pretty unremarkable.

So, isn’t it time the media, which seem so often to focus on traditionally observant Jews, substituted another term like “haredi”—a nonjudgmental word denoting devotion—for the one they currently favor, which other lexicons define as “excessive,” “immoderate” or “extremist”?

Deputy Mayor Yitzhak Pindrus is going home. Well, not exactly – but according to a rotation agreement signed by his party members (United Torah Judaism), Pindrus clears off in favor of Yossi Deitsch, who will as of next month become the deputy mayor representing the haredi Ashkenazim.

...Meanwhile, city council member Eli Simhayof (Shas) has also been appointed deputy mayor, changing the political equation at Kikar Safra all the more. Simhayof is eager to get things done, partly in order to detract attention from his possible indictment in the Holyland scandal.

In the U.S. and most western countries, Jews tend to identify their religious affiliation through one of the major Jewish movements, be it Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Jewish Renewal, and even Secular Humanistic Judaism.

Not so in Israel, where one’s religious standing is far more nuanced. In a country that loves army-influenced acronyms, a whole school of literary shortcuts and word play have sprung up.

Q: There’s an ongoing conflict in Israel – you might even call it a civil war – between secularists and the ultra-Orthodox, and not just over settlements or the two-state solution but over endemic issues such as civil marriage. Where do you see Israeli secularism tending in the next decade or so?

Gadi Taub: I would reserve the term civil war for actual use of arms, and I don’t think we’re anywhere near that. But there is a cultural struggle going on, and our bad parliamentary system creates a situation in which a minority can hold the majority hostage.

I don’t believe this can last forever, nor that the Orthodox minority will be able to take over the state and turn it into a theocracy.

King David, Winston Churchill and the Japanese Agon Shu Buddhist Association have all been drawn into the raging battle for the face of Jerusalem, in a dispute over statues, traffic circles, idolatry and religious coercion.

Zionism was originally one product of the tradition of Jewish secularism. Given the resurgence of religion in Israel –both national religious and haredi – it would be a mistake to say that it was a “winning concept.” Secularism, which began as a minority tradition contesting the power of the rabbis in Eastern Europe, finds itself once again embattled in the State of Israel. Whether it will win this battle or not remains very much uncertain.

For Asaf Banner, helping other people is simply in his genes. Growing up with a mother in social work and school counseling, he just couldn’t help but head in a similar direction after his army service.

...Anxious to explore this “core” of Judaism, Banner and his friends decided in 2004 to start another new organization – Bema’aglei Tzedek – which serves to engage thousands of young Israelis in social change, in the classroom, youth movements and the army.

Daniel Cohen’s moving television documentary, An Article of Hope, which will be broadcast on Channel One on Monday at 9:30 p.m., chronicles Ilan Ramon’s final journey and, at the same time, commemorates a special artifact from the Holocaust.

Edited by Yuval Arnon-Ohanna and Alec Braizblatt | Ariel University and IIHCC

The story of the journey of the Ethiopian Jews from their homes to Israel via Sudan is one of the great Jewish stories. Although it is widely known in certain circles, the actual story never ceases to amaze.

The far right religious movement SOS Israel claims that the land dealings affair involving designated IDF chief Maj.-Gen.Yoav Galant is a punishment from above for his role in the unilateral disengagement from Gaza.